Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 3 (1925-09).djvu/110

horror and awe inexpressible, and I thought that Miss Beardsley had concealed strange realization beneath her flippancy. She had tried to warn me: "This place is as mournful as Erebus. The perversity of nature has entered into the rocks; they seem alive."

The whole business looked ugly, and it especially explained the villagers' fear of the temple of Ishtar. There was dead silence for five minutes or more, and then I threw aside the thing of flame that had failed to justify its boast of strength. I heard a metallic ring as it went clattering over the stones. The eyes of Ishtar had moved nearer; and I felt that I had sounded the depths of anguish, and that I now dangled above an unreverberate abyss. Par above me through a fissure I saw the stars, but they glittered so weakly that they seemed to exude darkness and not light.

What if I should go on my knees to Ishtar and entreat her to love me? Perhaps her eyes would grow soft; perhaps I should see her and find her beautiful. The camel-drivers had found her beautiful. They had come in from the desert and she had comforted them with kisses and killed them with love.

"I could love you!" I said to the eyes, and I loathed the sound of my own voice. I knew what I had done, but I should never have spoken to Ishtar had not some force superior to my will persuaded me that utter destruction is more desirable than suspense.

At once the eyes grew immense and soft and tender in the night. They lost their snakelike glitter. They advanced toward me, and I heard a low swishing sound, as if something smooth and soft were crawling on its hands and knees over a rough, uneven surface. A curiously indescribable odor, acrid and necrophilic, came to me on the tiny breath of air blowing noiselessly in the dark. And then from beyond the narrow, gray borders of the temple I heard a sudden, sharp exclamation of fear and pain.

It was a voice of pity and terror in the night, shaming the eyes of Ishtar. It arose from the dark spaces, tender and full of infinite compassion and infinite fear, and it softened the hard edges of the darkness.

"Stay back," I shouted. "I shall take care of this."

The voice rose to a higher pitch; it swelled in the darkness and formed phrases and sentences and pleaded and reproached.

"Oh, Arthur, I warned you! I told you that nothing good would come of sleeping here. Arthur, where are you?"

"Miss Beardsley," I cried, "you must go back. It is nothing. No hurt will come to you."

"It is something, Arthur, and I would face it with you. I have no fear, Arthur. There is nothing in the darkness that can hurt us. Only our fears hurt us, and make monsters of the darkness. You must banish fear, Arthur—and I will help you!"

I knew that Miss Beardsley had rounded the gray walls, and that she walked within the temple, directly beneath the lowering, menacing eyes of Ishtar. I saw the eyes narrow and their softness disappear and a cold fury flame in their pupilless depths.

"Arthur!" called Miss Beardsley, and I knew that she stood not three yards from me. I could have stepped forward and touched her in the darkness. "Arthur!" The voice was reproachful and despairing.

I moved forward to intercept her, and I saw the eyes drop and swerve to one side. They struck against something soft, and I heard a sudden, frightened scream; and I knew that Miss Beardsley had been attacked, and thrown forcefully upon the ground.

I left the protection of the wall and went down on my hands and knees,